Guest column: One year later, case against Paterno is still extremely weak

By JOHN ZIEGLER

Thursday, November 8, 2012

One year ago, Penn State suddenly fired legendary football coach Joe Paterno, despite 61 years of exemplary service to the university both on and off the field. The reason given at the time was that Penn State needed to separate itself from the Jerry Sandusky scandal (that really worked out well for them!) and the implication was that Paterno was somehow responsible for allowing a known pedophile to molest boys on Penn State's campus.

Since then, the conventional wisdom, which has been created by the media and facilitated by politicians and Penn State board members with a clear incentive to substantiate their original actions, is that the case is now closed. Paterno knew exactly what Sandusky was and Penn State engaged in a cover up to protect itself from "bad publicity."

Even though I have no connection to Penn State, I have never bought into that narrative, largely because I have made a career out of understanding how the modern media really works and why they would be so vulnerable to getting a story like this wrong. I have devoted most of the last year to finding out what really happened here and have just released a 32-minute "mini movie" (the precuser to a proposed full length documentary) which tells a large part of the other side of this story. It can be seen at my website www.FramingPaterno.com.

Contrary to what the media would have you believe, the last year has actually been rather kind to the factual record when it comes to the defense of Joe Paterno. Much of what we thought we knew a year ago has turned out to be either highly questionable or just flat-out false.

The media narrative a year ago was that Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in a PSU shower and then told Joe Paterno about that. Joe Paterno then supposedly did "nothing" about it and instead led a coverup.

We now know that Mike McQueary never even claimed that he saw such a thing and that he has never been able to pinpoint to whom at the time he actually reported anything close to that. We now know that McQueary and the prosecution got the date, month and even year of the episode blatantly incorrect (and that it was Jerry Sandusky who told them when it actually happened). We now know that the prosecution was well aware during the grand jury investigation who the "victim" ("Victim 2") in that episode was and chose not to call him because he had made several statements on the record denying that anything remotely sexual had transpired that night.

As it turned out, Jerry Sandusky was actually found not guilty of that particular charge at his trial.

As for what McQueary told Paterno, the media hung Paterno by four words he used in his grand jury testimony when asked about this subject. Paterno (far less declaratively than the media would like to believe) said that McQueary had described to him "fondling" and something of "a sexual nature." To the media this apprently meant that Paterno knew Sandusky was a pedophile in 2001 and did "nothing" after that (even though he reported it immediately to his superior and the person in charge of the campus police). But the real truth is far more complex.

We know that there is no indication in the police report of the interview Paterno gave them just before his testimony of him using any sexual terms. It is also extremely important to point out that at this time Paterno was an 84-year-old man being asked about a 10-year-old conversation with a witness (Mike McQueary) who couldn't even remember the year in which it happened. I have spoken to many people very close to this case who strongly believe that Paterno simply couldn't remember what McQueary had told him and asked him to refresh his recollection. Many believe McQueary (for reasons that may eventually become clear) then proceeded to tell him a different story in 2011 than he did in 2001.

This scenario is not only highly plausible, it makes the rest of the evidence in this case make far more sense than it does under the narrative created by the media and investigator Louis Freeh.

Those who claim a cover-up here have done so despite a frightening dearth of evidence and despite the fact that they are completely unable to answer rather simple questions like these:

Why would Paterno cover up for an ex-coach he didn't even like and if he was going to do so why did he make sure virtually the entire PSU administration was aware of the situation (the "negative publicity" claim goes directly against Paterno's 61-year record and is shown to be absurd by the fact that Syracuse basketball simultaneously easily survived a similar situation with a current coach)?

Why would Mike McQueary have suddenly been "allowed" by those he worked for to bust the cover-up and testify in the way that he did?

If the episode was such a big deal at the time, and the subject of a cover-up, why couldn't anyone involved even remember the year in which it happened?

Why didn't Joe Paterno, if he was really leading a cover-up, just tell the grand jury that he couldn't remember what McQueary had told him?

Why, if Joe Paterno was leading a cover-up that ended up destroying former Athletic Director Tim Curley's career and making him vulnerable to jail time, did Curley praise Paterno for his "honor and integrity" after he was charged for his alleged role?

While no one knows for sure yet what really happened here, the actual evidence now suggests that this scandal, at least from Paterno's perspective, was really a perfect storm of circumstances, misunderstandings, naivete, bad luck, horrendous crisis management, and horrific media coverage. After speaking to far more of the people integral to this case than Louis Freeh did for his report, I currently believe that Joe Paterno was likely mostly, if not totally, innocent of what the media charged him with.

The bottom line is that, one year later, it is still extremely possible that Jerry Sandusly's list of innocent victims actually includes Joe Paterno.